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shareCourt Metrage Festival De Cannes 2016
Amsterdam Film Festival Winner Best Experimental Film 2016
London IFF Winner Best Experimental Film
Best Director Blow Up Film Festival 2016
It is not a surprise that the current wave of world events have filtered into the art world. Displacement, cultural migration and memory are central to the theme of this poetic short film and photographic work. As reality weighs heavily on our conscience, stirred up by the inundation of horrific narratives and footage. Refugees abandoning the ills of their long loved countries delving into the brutality of the unknown. BJ and Richeille Formento present this work as silent bystanders in the mass cultural migration and world shift that is in full motion. With beautiful, vivid imagery and a haunting mood, this powerful work juxtaposes loss with an ephemeral timeless beauty that is signature to the artists’ work. They convey the juxtaposition of nightmare with visual poetry, and cultural anxiety with escapism. After two consecutive stellar years with entire booths dedicated to their work at Art Miami, Formento + Formento, return to Art Basel Miami week with an out-of-the-box presentation of this extraordinary and poignant work.
BJ Formento was born in Hawaii and grew up in the Philippines. After receiving his BFA in Photography from the Academy of Arts University of California, he moved to New York and studied with Eugene Richards and Arnold Newman, and assisted Richard Avedon, Mary Ellen Mark, and Annie Leibovitz. Since 2001, he has shot for a host of publications and advertising clients while developing his art photography work. Richeille Formento was born in London and attended the prestigious Central St. Martins College of Art before working as an art director in the fashion industry.
Formento & Formento entered the Fine Art scene in 2009 with their first series Circumstance: American Beauty Down on Bruised Knees. Embarking on a road trip from New York to Los Angeles, the Formentos travelled through 25 states, photographing the women they found along the way, often recruited the same day as the shoot. Referencing classic American paintings and cinema, Circumstance embodies the combined American visions of both BJ and Richeille. Capturing the country during uncertain times, their dramatically lit subjects are transformed into heroines and femme fatales caught in intense moments of emotion and reflection.
They have garnered a passionate following in a short time with representation and exhibitions that span the globe. They are represented by Robert Klein Gallery and Fahey Klein Gallery and have had solo exhibitions worldwide. YK Editions published a large coffee table book on Circumstance in 2013, a documentary on their work shown at the Pompidou Museum in Paris the same year. Their increased presence in the international art fair circuit includes Paris Photo, AIPAD, The Armory Show, Photo Shanghai, Art Silicon, Art Miami, Art Wynwood, and Photo London. Their second book published by Te Neus is due out in 2016.
Plays in
Shorts Program I: Connect the Dots
Q&A with the filmmakers after the screening Moderator: Trixi Agiao
